


Like I'm Gonna Lose You

by le_chat_vilain



Series: The Joker and the Thief [27]
Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5987224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/le_chat_vilain/pseuds/le_chat_vilain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months have passed since Arkham was locked away in his own asylum, and Jay and Blaire are living a charmed life, until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like I'm Gonna Lose You

**Author's Note:**

> [TW: death, grief, coarse language] All I have to say is please don’t hate me. I’m not sorry, but please don’t hate me lol. You think this hurts to read? Try writing it. I promise you that it will be worth the pain in the end, so please have faith! 
> 
> Musical inspiration is Like I’m Gonna Lose You by Jasmine Thompson.

Six months go by in the blink of an eye. Arkham is locked up in his own looney bin, just as we planned, and it’s the sweetest revenge in the world. Jonathan tests both samples I stole and confirms that the time bomb element has absolutely been eliminated. I let him live as payment for his help once we find out, but then the dumb bastard starts trying to replicate the serums, and well, we can’t have that. Jay and I made it a date night, teaching him the real meaning of fear. Really, it was naive to think we could let him live in the first place.

If Gotham thought it knew chaos before, then it’s surely realised we’ve now redefined it. We haven’t wasted our time at all - we’ve mowed down three mayors and multiple candidates for mayor, the police force is in tatters, and our fellow nefarious contemporaries all know that when we tell them to stay out of our way, we mean it. They all know how Scarecrow found that out the hard way.

Then it all comes to a grinding halt.

It’s Tuesday night. We’re sitting on the couch watching Ink Master, my head’s in his lap and he’s stroking my hair absent mindedly as we critique the frankly shit house job one of the artists has done on his canvas.

“If he doesn’t go home for this we’re going on a road trip, and I’m going to murder Dave Navarro myself,” he states, serious as all hell.

“No, I like Dave Navarro,” I whine. 

“I’ll let you skin him and we can make a nice throw rug for the floor here?”

“Hmm…deal!” I agree with a grin. “You know you would kill it on this show, babe.”

“Oh I know, but something tells me that my presence would be frowned upon,” he chuckles, leaning down to kiss me. When he pulls away he looks like he’s in pain and instantly the hair on the back of my neck stands up.

“Jay, are you okay?” I ask, trying to hide the panic I’m feeling.

“I…I don’t know…” I sit up and take his face in my hands, turning his head from side to side and looking into his eyes, looking for a sign, anything. He reaches across and rubs his left arm, opening and closing his hand into a fist repeatedly. “My arm…it’s…tingling. It fucking hurts…it’s like electricity…”

I turn my attention to his arm, the significance of which one it is not registering. His breathing quickens and his right hand moves to his chest, and then it hits us both like a runaway fucking freight train. I look up at him again and I can see the resignation in his eyes. No. Not on my watch.

“No! Jay hold on, I’ll call Harley and Freeze, we’ll fix you, baby, please just hold on!’ I beg him, and reach out for my phone but he stops me.

"Blaire.”

“No! Let go!”

“Blaire,” he says with as much force as he can muster, and just shakes his head at me. He pulls me into a kiss that feels like he’s saying goodbye. Because he is. He drags his lips away from mine and holds my forehead to his. He’s hanging in there as best he can. “They won’t get here in time. Please, just…don’t waste this.”

His hands are shaking, and so is my entire body. We know what’s coming.

“Please…don’t leave me here,” I beseech him in a whisper, even though I know it’s no use. He coughs and I can hear blood gurgling in his lungs. The tears start running in hot, salty rivers down my cheeks, and he smiles sadly, squeezing the back of my neck gently and pushing our heads together a little harder.

“Baby, don’t cry. Don’t let that be the last thing I see,” he asks of me. “You’re gonna keep going. You’re gonna give em hell for me okay. Don’t let up…Don’t cry. No tears.”

He brushes a tear from my cheeks with his thumb.

“I can’t…this is all my fault…” I try to pull away from him.

“Blaire, no. Fucking no,” he growls at me through gritted teeth, pain in his tone. “Never say that. I would not change a fucking second. Listen to me, listen!”

He pulls me back, holding my face in both hands and looking me in the eye.

“Not a second,” He coughs again and there’s the blood. “My life _was_ the joke until I met you.”

His left hand drops and he roars out in pain. I take it in my own and make him look at me.

“Jay!’

"Smile for me, baby,” he requests, giving me the best one he can muster as his jaw clenches, hand tightening in mine and I know he doesn’t have much longer. I do my best but I can feel my lip quivering as I try and hold the tears back. “That’s better. Thank you, for making it all worth it. I…Blaire…I…”

***

I knew it the second I felt that pain in my arm. Fuck. I should’ve known. Like I was ever gonna get the last laugh. Life was never gonna let me go without one hell of a punch line and this is it; area man who has it all loses it in a split second, sitting on the couch in his underwear.

My heart starts to race and I try as best I can to keep it steady but I know it’s gonna be no use.

The way she’s looking at me, that dread, that panic; I can fucking see her heart breaking in her eyes, hear it shattering into a billion fucking pieces on loop like the sick torture this is. The tears start rolling down her cheeks and for the first time in a very long time I’m terrified. I don’t want to leave her but I know nobody is gonna get here in time to stop this happening. It’s done. My fate is sealed. I can’t stop this now and I feel like the world’s biggest cunt because there’s a selfish thought in my head that’s telling me that at least I’m not the one who has to go on. At least I don’t have to live without her like she’s going to have to without me. Forever maybe.

I can’t even get the words out in the end. I can’t tell her how much I fucking love her. How she has no idea what she saved me from. She gave me something to live for, and something to die for. More than that, she gave me purpose, even if half the time it was just to make her smile.

And I never told her. I never told her how much I loved her.

I think I’d doubted it, right up to now. I thought it was just the idea of her I loved, someone to share it all with. I told myself it wasn’t really love because I’d been told my whole life I wasn’t capable of that. But now, she’s smiling at me, that sad, broken smile, doing it just because I asked her to - an act of pure selflessness - and all I want is to make her feel better. All I want is for her to not hurt like this. If I could I’d do anything to stop it but it’s beyond my control, and the powerlessness of it all makes this infinitely worse.

I wanna tell her she was the only good thing ever to walk through my door, the only thing that ever made me feel human and not like a monster.

I wanna tell her my favourite time of the day is at the end of it, when I finally feel her fall asleep on my chest and she just looks so happy and peaceful. When I whisper ‘fuck I love you’ to her and she never hears me but I do it anyway, and how I’ve done that since that first night she came back to me.

I wanna tell her I’ve loved her since the very first fucking time she kissed me and I wanna tell her how that was the moment I came to life, the moment I stopped sitting on the outside hurling abuse at the one’s fighting it out, and stepped into the fucking ring.

I cant even get out those last two words. I can’t even tell her I simply love her.

What a fucking joke. I guess hell really does exist because this has to be it.

I fucking love you more than life itself, baby, and I’m sorry I never told you that. I am so fucking sorry.

The last thing I feel is the softness of her lips on mine, and I let my last breath be her next, then finally let go.

***

_Love you._

He mouths the final words and I steal one more kiss. He squeezes my hand so tightly I think he’s gonna break it, and my lips are still lingering on his as he shudders and the life leaves his body. I’m terrified to pull away. Terrified to let that kiss go because I know that was the last one. His hand goes slack in mine and I feel his chest stop heaving. His right hand drops dead in my lap, and I don’t want to take my left from his cheek because I know what will happen when I do.

But I can’t stay here forever.

I sit back slowly, eyes closed, not daring to open them.

When I do, nothing could have ever prepared me for it anyway. His head’s resting limp against my hand and this time I don’t stop the floodgates from opening.

“Jay…Jay?…Jay!” I whisper hopelessly between sobs. “You selfish fucking bastard, wake up. Wake up! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

I’m screaming it at his lifeless body, slapping him across the face repeatedly between kissing him, shaking his shoulders and wailing like one of the women at the beginning of Rabbit Proof Fence. I can’t even believe the sounds are coming from me, they sound like they’re ripped straight from hell; inhuman, tortured, they’re pain in its purest form.

My body starts to shiver and both numbness and nausea wash over me. I don’t know how long I sit there straddling him, just waiting. Holding out hope that the serum brings him back, even though I know it’s what really took him.

“I love you too,” I murmur, even though he’s long gone. “More than I ever told you, I love you so much, Jay. So. Fucking. Much.”

A new wave of grief comes crashing down on me as I realise I never told him how much. I never told him why I loved him, how he made me feel worthy and like a real person again and not an abomination, or a problem in need of a solution.

I never told him how my favourite thing in the world was waking up next to him in the morning and whispering “fuck I love you” to him right before I kissed him awake, even though he was so clearly still passed out. I never told him how much I love that uneasy innocence that he has in his sleep; the way he looks right now.

I’ll never get to tell him that I’ve loved him since the second I snuck back through his door, and he grinned at me like the devil when he realised I had.

I’ll never get to tell him that I wouldn’t take back a second either, even the bad ones. If I could do it all again with him I would. Even if it meant losing him all over again too.

But it’s too late. I spent so much time thinking it wasn’t real, that I didn’t stop long enough to see how wrong I was. Nothing in my life has ever been so real as the way I loved him. The way I still do, and the way I always will.

Eventually I’ve got nothing left to give. No tears are coming. No voice left with which to scream. I barely have the strength to reach for my phone and dial Harley’s number.

I certainly don’t have the ability to tell her what’s going on, I just tell her I need her here. Now.

Even then, I can hear in her voice that she knows.

I’m still sitting there in his lap when she walks in the door, my forehead pressed to his, twisting his hair in my fingers and holding his heavy hand to the tattoo he put on my chest. It’s the perfect portrait of where this was always going, one way or another.

Because people like us? We don’t get happy endings. We just don’t.


End file.
